The paradox of progressive racial politics

Plus some good candidates and the Kaiser’s blunder

Kaiser Wilhelm II (center) with Paul von Hindenburg (left) and Erich Ludendorff (right) studying maps. (Photo credit: Bettmann)

Greetings! Before we get to today’s questions, I want to talk briefly about two gubernatorial candidates who I think make concrete some of the ideas around “expanding the tent” that get kicked around here and on the internet in somewhat vague terms.

Geoff Duncan is the former lieutenant governor of Georgia who fell out with Donald Trump over Trump’s election theft efforts and is now running for governor as a Democrat. He has adjusted his views on abortion to align with his new party and wants to build on Georgia’s kinda sorta Medicaid expansion as part of a broader focus on affordability. He’s being hit in the primaries for not being progressive enough, notably by former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. It’s very rare for a big city mayor to get elected governor, because normally they are negatively perceived in the rest of the state. Bottoms was not a particularly popular or successful mayor of Atlanta. We’ve seen Stacey Abrams try and fail twice to win statewide in Georgia with a pure mobilization strategy. And we know that Raphael Warnock’s successful re-election campaign specifically pitched itself to Brian Kemp crossover voters. Democrats opening their hearts to ex-Republicans without demanding that they disavow everything they’ve ever said or done is how you expand the tent.

Andrew White is running for governor of Texas, specifically labeling himself as an “Independent Democrat,” and not just sanding the edges off the most contentious progressive policy ideas but explicitly embracing positions that put him to the right of Biden/Harris/Schumer/Jeffries Democrats. He’s “a proud Second Amendment supporter,” and he wants to “work to reduce abortion” while protecting fundamental rights. He says we should “drill today.” I don’t think Greg Abbott is particularly vulnerable, so even an amazing campaign in Texas would probably lose. But this is just a pointed reminder that it’s easy to be more moderate than 99 percent of existing Democratic Party elected officials while still being to the left of red state Republicans.

On to the questions.

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Robert: The Ezra/Ta-Nehisi Coates interview: discuss.

Coates’s point that his job as a writer is to say things that he believes to be true rather than to play politician is well-taken.

And I respect enormously that Coates has always conducted himself as someone who understands the flip side of that equation: He’s staked out a lot of edgy takes over the years, but very rarely in the spirit of savagely attacking practical politicians for failing to agree with him. I think the world would be a much better place if more left-wing writers, academics, and artists followed Coates in that regard and just offered their takes about the world rather than complaining about Chuck Schumer. Then it could be my job to complain about Chuck Schumer, because I actually am really interested in electoral politics.

The problem, though, is that even if you want to be a pure truth-teller — which, as I say, is fine — it still does raise the question of what people should do with the truths that you tell.

I think if you take seriously Coates’s ideas about the power of racism in American life, that calls for an approach to politics that focuses on trying to relentlessly downplay the salience of race. That’s what late-in-life M.L.K. wanted to pivot to. It’s the direction Bayard Rustin wanted to take the civil rights movement, and it’s the approach that William Julius Wilson espoused. I think that’s the correct application of a broadly Coatesian perspective to practical issues. I also understand if not everyone wants to actually conduct themselves in that way. Back in 2013, Coates wrote a piece criticizing “How the Obama Administration Talks to Black America” on the grounds that it was “‘convenient race-talk’ from a president who ought to know better.”

But should he have known better? As progressives well know, Barack Obama’s very occasional statements like “if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon Martin” generated a lot of white backlash and accomplished very little in practice. By contrast, “convenient race-talk” helped win elections and deliver a historic expansion of Medicaid coverage to millions of people in need. It’s always seemed to me that if you read between the lines a little, you can see that this is one reason that Michelle Obama has never wanted to be more routinely engaged in politics. She acknowledges that the way Obama (mostly) talked about this stuff is the right way, in practice, for a politician to talk. But she’s also a human being who doesn’t want to talk like that, because it’s not how she feels.

And I completely respect that, just as I completely respect Coates’s desire to write about how he feels rather than to write about the strategic and tactical implications of his views.

At the same time, though, what happens in electoral politics is a really big deal. Someone has to consider the strategic and tactical implications.

There’s a school of thought that holds that bold, broadly Coatesian calling out of racism will be highly effective politics. But I think the upshot of Coatesian analysis of American history and American life is precisely that this is not going to work. It’s not a magazine writer’s job to cater to the median voter, and it’s not the president’s job to tell people bracing truths or to express his innermost feelings about the world. For my part, I’m a writer and not a politician, so I’m not going to say things that I don’t believe are true. But I do also think that politics as a vocation is broader than just what candidates for office say and do. The politicians exist in an ecosystem that includes staffers, donors, volunteers, journalists, and tons of amateur posters on social media. It would be unbearable to spend life 24/7 consumed with tactical considerations. But I also think it’s correct of Ezra to believe that he has a very important platform in American life and it’s his obligation to not just toss off things he thinks are true, but to also think about whether he is making the problems of the world better or worse.

Last but most unsatisfactorily, I want to continue to plead that I think most left-of-center people arguing about Charlie Kirk (and certainly I include myself here) just have not sufficiently immersed themselves in the Kirk canon to really speak authoritatively about his career. Certainly that’s how I feel about myself. I know he was much more right-wing than I am, and that that’s not a good reason to murder someone. But especially because there’s not like a definitive book of Charlie Kirk’s major essays, you’re talking about trying to form an impression of someone based on bits and pieces of podcasts and videos of live speaking appearances. So I think it’s great to see two of the major writers of our time engaging with each other directly, but the specific inciting incident strikes me as a little bit poorly chosen since almost nobody in the audience can really judge who is correct in a first-order sense.

Edward: There’s been some discussion about Kamala Harris’s comments regarding Pete Buttigieg as a potential VP pick. I recognize that you don’t share her view that marginalized identities necessarily function as electoral baggage (at least not to the degree she suggests).

But given her own stated belief—that being a woman, Black, and married to a Jewish man represents a heavy lift for a national campaign, and that Pete Buttigieg’s being gay would add even more baggage—wouldn’t the most honorable and politically prudent course of action for the Democratic Party have been for her to step aside? If she truly believed those identities were significant liabilities, why insist on running in what Democrats themselves framed as an existential contest against Trump? Wasn’t beating Trump supposed to be the overriding priority?

Had she stepped aside, it might have been seen as an act of conviction—putting principle and party above self-interest. Perhaps Black voters would have pushed back, but these are the same voters often credited with pragmatic judgment in supporting Biden in 2020. It makes for an interesting alternative history to consider.

This is another good example of the same paradox. I do not share the widespread progressive belief that nonwhite or female candidates face some kind of major electoral handicap. But if you do believe that, the logical upshot isn’t “Don’t put Pete Buttigieg on the ticket as V.P.:” it’s “Don’t nominate Kamala Harris for president.”

But none of the identity-brained Democrats who believe it was desperately important to put a mediocre white man on the ticket to balance out Harris actually embrace the logic of “Never run women or people of color.” And they are right to reject that logic.

If Democrats put a thumb on the scales in favor of white men, they are cutting themselves off from the large majority of political talent available in their party. What effective politicians do is recognize that while identity obviously matters in politics, it is both of somewhat bounded relevance and also a double-edged sword. It’s worth recalling that the iconic political hero of working-class rural America is a lifelong New Yorker who lives in a gilded penthouse, loves show tunes, wears a suit and tie every day, and has zero personal interest in hunting, fishing, or firearms. Trump’s key strategy for winning rural votes has been saying things that they agree with, just as Barack Hussein Obama was able to win in places like Iowa and Ohio by saying things those voters agreed with.

Harris could, and should, have leveraged her identity to offer some spicy takes that would have generated more blowback if offered by a white man like Joe Biden.

Evan: What would be your advice for how a progressive politician, who publicly took a position that they still believe is right on the merits but have come to realize is not politically tenable, could handle explaining why they no longer are running on that position? Should they act like they genuinely converted their views, or openly appeal to the idea that “the people have spoken”?

Let me give a few examples where I am personally in the bucket of “I think this idea is fine but it doesn’t make sense to run on it:”

• Medicare is great. I believe everyone should have health insurance, and so I’ve supported Medicare for All bills in the past. But we’re in a cost-of-living crisis right now, and I think voters want fast urgent action on bringing prices down, not a gigantic controversial legislative battle on reshaping the entire health care system. So, I want to extend premium tax credits, speed up the approval of new drugs, clear out red tape that makes it harder for medical providers to expand, stop scams that let hospitals overcharge Medicare, and do everything possible to make sure the possibilities of artificial intelligence in the health care space are accessible for everyone.

• One billion Americans? Look, I literally wrote the book and I think that if the Biden administration had taken some of my advice on this, we could have avoided a lot of problems. But after what actually happened, it’s just not going to fly.

• If all the privately owned firearms somehow vanished from the United States tomorrow, that would do an enormous amount to bring down the murder rate. But that goes against every tradition that we have in this country, and it’s not something that people want. I think it makes Democrats look silly when we start talking like regulating exactly which kind of rifles hobbyists can buy is going to make a difference to a crime problem that is overwhelmingly about small, easily concealed handguns, most of which aren’t even purchased legally. The kind of “gun control” we actually need is to arrest people carrying illegal guns, and to crack down on the people selling them. I think we really need to bend over backwards to reassure law-abiding people that this is not a slippery slope to gun confiscation, and that means not even nibbling around the edges of restricting people’s Second Amendment rights.

I think these are all pretty reasonable things to say, and tend to underscore that if you actually understand a topic and interrogate your own thinking about it, then it’s possible to be both politically opportunistic and also authentic.

The other possibility, of course, is that you change your mind on something:

• I supported the Equality Act because I wanted to ban discrimination against L.G.B.T. people, but a lot of smart lawyers think that as written it would de facto ban sex-segregated sports leagues, and I just don’t think that’s what nondiscrimination means.

• I was for a fracking ban to accelerate transition to green energy, but the fallout of the Russian invasion of Ukraine made it clear to me that as long as the world is using oil and gas, we need as much of that oil and gas to be American-made as possible.

It seems to me that politicians are often a little too reluctant to just bite the bullet and say they’ve had learning experiences. But I do think it’s pretty clear that even though flip-flopping isn’t the best look, it’s fundamentally better to have a popular position rather than an unpopular one, so it’s smart to try to really interrogate yourself and see if there are places where you are open to changing.

Oliver: What explains why parts of the mainstream left still celebrate 1970s far left terrorists? The Chicago Teachers Union celebrated Assata Shakur yesterday in a tweet, who is the constituency for this? They were unpopular, criminal and failed.

I don’t have a great answer for this. Part of the explanation is that the people running the C.T.U. seem pretty dumb.

But there is a deeper question here. I love the podcast “The Big Picture” with Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins, which is about movies, not politics. When the hosts do mention politics, they seem like Obama-loving millennial libs who got excited about Brat Summer and alarmed by Trump’s re-election. But when discussing “One Battle After Another,” they seem to take it for granted that violent left-wing revolutionaries are admirable, which I don’t think is how most people view them and I also don’t think is a correct reading of the film.

Similarly, when “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” (which definitely does valorize blowing up pipelines) came out, they clearly seemed to admire the movie, not just on a cinematic level but as a political take. And yet there’s no other context in which those appear to be their values. They’re normal middle-aged parents living in Los Angeles who are excited when they get to take a work trip to a film festival. They’re not eco-doomers or radical anticapitalists, they’re not encouraging people to join terrorist cells. It seems to be some species of “If progressive politics is broadly speaking good, then extreme left politics must also be good.” But is that right? Neither the fictional French 75 nor the real Black Liberation Army accomplished anything useful for anyone.

City of Trees: How much of the recent political realignment can be chalked up to being unique to Donald Trump? When he’s gone from politics, should there be any thought given to any possible reversion of the trends? What changes do you think are most likely to stick, and what ones could fade away?

This is one of the big questions of our time, and I think the answer is that in terms of realignments, probably very little is unique to Trump because you see the same broad trends in countries all around the world.

What I think is a bit eccentric to Trump is the cult-of-personality status that he wields inside the Republican Party. A normal president who decided he wanted to get the pesky issue of federal abortion restrictions off the table would find himself facing pushback from safe-seat members of Congress. A normal president who wanted to spend down political capital on acts of personal corruption with no policy upshot would find himself facing pushback from frontline senators. You can see why Trump’s particular bundle of policy positions appeals disproportionately to voters with a somewhat authoritarian mindset and why that opens the door to MAGA cult dynamics. But it still doesn’t follow that J.D. Vance or any other successor figure will be able to pull it off in the same way.

Thomas L. Hutcheson: I’d like to see more on political trajectories. How do people go from apolitical, generic liberal to MAGA (without stopping at Radical Centrism® 😊 on the way?

Instead of _just_ bemoaning social media and/or thinking about mitigating ways to engage with it, let’s think of ways to improve it.

I think the way to think about this is that the main goal of the right is to defeat the left, while the main goal of the liberal center is something like “make the world a freer and more prosperous place.”

So if you started out left-adjacent and not that political but wind up having experiences that leave you with strong anti-leftist sentiment, it’s in some ways more natural to defect all the way to the right — the ideological grouping that is single-mindedly focused on crushing the left — than to land in the center where, yes, people will agree with you that the left has a lot of bad ideas but also maybe some good ones and basically we’re trying to be chill.

The way to improve it, though, is that non-extreme Americans have a bad tendency to surrender the whole idea of caring about politics. Donors to both parties are extreme compared to either party’s electoral base. But that’s an empirical regularity, not a law of nature. If everyone who ever thought to themselves “Democrats are too far left but Republicans are too far right” cut a check to the House Blue Dogs, then they would be the top fundraisers in the House. If you appended to the check a little note saying “I know you guys are endangered frontliners but I’m not just backing you for partisan reasons, I sincerely think it’s good that you are more conservative than the average Democrat,” that would encourage further acts of moderation. There are some equivalent figures on the Republican side, too.

But a lot of moderates tend toward cynicism or acting above it all rather than rolling up their sleeves and actually doing stuff, which leaves the playing field in the hands of extremists — while many random American citizens don’t even necessarily know what a more centrist approach to politics and policy would look like.

Michael Bonitati: I wasn’t concerned about Mamdani’s rent control proposal because I figured it’d be an NYC experiment, it wouldn’t work, and that’d be that. But I’m seeing similar proposals from local politicians and now am I worried about it spreading through the Democratic Party. Are others seeing and feeling similarly?

The problem is that during the July Days, when Joe Biden was trying to hold on to the nomination and being primarily supported in that quest by Bernie Sanders, A.O.C., and the Congressional Progressive Caucus, they rolled out a national rent-control plan. This stood no chance of happening and was deliberately structured by an econ team that knew better to have relatively little real-world impact. But my concern at the time was that it would validate a comeback of rent-control proposals in blue states, and that seems to have occurred, though so far few have passed.

Kenneth Fockele: Alternative history alert: What do you think of this take that Frederick the Great could have averted World War I if he had ruled at the time of Kaiser Wilhelm II?

I was a little surprised that Katja Hoyer, who obviously knows more about Germany than I do, even considered this to be an interesting counterfactual question. My sense was that the overwhelming conventional wisdom is that Kaiser Wilhelm’s desire for colonies and decision to embark on a big naval shipbuilding effort were a huge fiasco.

Britain did not assist Prussia under Bismarck in its effort to unify all of Germany under its leadership, but they didn’t try to stop it either. The reason they didn’t try to stop it was that they did not regard German unification as an expansionist menace on the same scale as France under Napoleon or Louis XIV. But Kaiser Wilhelm came to power later and really wanted Germany to obtain a colonial empire. And he thought Germany should build a large navy both to secure colonies and also to prepare for war with Britain. Britain found this alarming and it led them to very actively try to settle various colonial disputes with Russia, which allowed them to join the broad Franco-Russian geopolitical alignment in a way that set the stage for World War I.

Not only do I think Frederick the Great could have avoided this fiasco, I don’t think it would have taken a Frederick-scale mastermind to pull it off.